Captured by the Warrior (15 page)

‘Why not?’ she responded. ‘You don’t trust anyone. You seem to cope.’

She heard his sharp intake of breath, a tension rippling through his body against her.

‘It’s no way to be, Alice,’ he said finally, his voice hollow. ‘It’s something I’m only just starting to realise.’

A
lice’s eyes snapped open, pure fright arcing through her body. For a moment she had believed herself to be back there, at Felpersham’s castle, trapped at the side of the moat, scrabbling in the mud, helpless. But nay, she was safe. Her parcelled breath expelled slowly; relief flooded her veins. A delicious warmth penetrated the flimsy covering of her chemise; she lay on her back, Bastien’s heavy arm slung over her midriff. The sides of the cote-hardie that Bastien had wrapped her in for warmth had fallen open in her sleep, but she did not feel cold now. The heat emanating from his forearm pulsed through her, setting off small, dangerous flickers of desire. The tension in her limbs softened, her initial fear on waking revolving swiftly into dangerous anticipation.

Slowly, slowly, she twisted her head on Bastien’s tunic, her makeshift pillow, unwilling to wake him, hearing his deep, steady breathing. He lay just a fraction away from her, the heady, intoxicating vibrancy
of him heating the length of her body. Her stomach somersaulted, peculiar sensations flipping through her veins. So close! In the moonlight, his tousled hair shone a pale gold colour, his bold features appearing as if carved from stone. She studied his profile: the proud, straight nose that flared around the nostrils, giving his lean face a gentler look; the full dramatic sensuality of his mouth.

She wondered at this man, this man who had burst into her life, so violently, so vividly, that all else seemed to fade dully in comparison. Why had he come after her, when she had refused to believe him about Edmund? He hadn’t criticised her, or chastised her, merely understood. He’d been kind. Aye, he had been kind, a behaviour of which she hadn’t thought him capable, this brusque, athletic man of war.

His eyes sprang open, watchful, attentive, saw her eyes glimmering wide in the darkness. ‘What is it?’ he whispered, his half-awake voice low, slumberous.

I love you. The thought, stark and intense, burst into her brain, a shocking truth. Alice gasped, stunned by the raw, naked simplicity of her feelings.

‘Are you ill?’ Bastien propped himself up on one arm, concerned by her silence. Strands of golden hair fell over his forehead, shimmering in the light of the fire. Over their heads, the wind chased gently through the ruined battlements, a drawn-out, keening sigh.

‘Nay,’ she breathed, ‘it’s nothing, go back to sleep.’ The cote-hardie slipping from her shoulders, she sat up abruptly, unable to think straight, pinioned by his incisive glance. ‘Actually, I think I need something to drink.’ She licked her lips, knowing full well that her dry mouth had little to do with thirst. Rolling sideways,
she made as if to stand up, but he held her back, a hand on her shoulder.

‘Let me. I’ll fetch my flagon.’

Bastien returned a few moments later, carrying the leather bottle that had been strapped to the saddle, pulling the stopper out as he handed it down to her. ‘Here.’

She stretched out her arm, accepting the bottle gratefully. The wide, loose sleeve of her chemise fell back along her arm, revealing its white, lustrous length, the delicate wrist, the fragile crook of her elbow. Bastien stared at it, transfixed, his heart beginning to pound. Her skin looked like silk; he ached to touch, to test its fineness beneath his fingers. Sleep chased from him; every nerve-ending came alert, shivering with awareness, with arousal.

Alice tipped the wide-necked bottle up to her lips, drank greedily. She had been thirsty after all. In her haste to drink, trickles of water spilled out from the sides of her mouth, running down over her neck. Bastien followed the sparkling path of the droplets, down, down over the hollowed curve of her throat, down to the low, gaping neckline of the chemise, and took a deep, shuddering breath.

‘Oh dear!’ Alice laughed self-consciously, springing to her feet to hand the bottle back to Bastien, wiping the sides of her wet mouth with the back of her arm.

‘I didn’t expect that!’ She crooked her head to one side, attempting to smile, conscious of a curious tension between them. The air was thick with expectancy. ‘Bastien?’ she ventured, willing him to break the silence.

He didn’t answer. The moon, emerging briefly from behind a wreath of cloud, shone behind Alice’s diminutive figure, highlighting every single, delicious curve
of her body through the gossamer fabric of her chemise. The soft indentation of her waist, the tempting push of her rounded breast against the flimsy fabric, the rounded flare of her hips, all were revealed to him with striking, vibrant clarity. The heart-stopping sight of her punched him, hard, in the gut.

Self-control ruptured, blunt need clawing at him, driving out all logic, all sense of right or wrong. The water bottle dropped from his fingers, landing on the mossy earth with a soft thud. Big arms reached forwards, snaring her waist, pulling her towards him, hard, close. Alice didn’t ask, didn’t question; she knew what was about to happen and welcomed it. One rough thumb smoothed away the single pearl of water at the corner of her mouth, before his lips descended, brutal, rough, demanding.

Just one kiss. That was all. Just one touch of her lips to bury that burning need that consumed him, ripped through him like a forest fire. He ducked his head, dark gold strands falling over his eyes, mouth slewing over hers, insistent, demanding. At the cool press of her lips, his blood hurtled faster, his need to claim her threatening to overwhelm him. He was out of control, desire ripping through him like a wild animal, and he knew it.

Alice sank into him, cleaving her body into his, her toes grazing the ground as he hauled her against him, feeling his hardened muscles against her softness. As his mouth roamed over hers, her breath came in short, rapid pants; huge waves of desire crashed over her, relentless. She teetered on the edge of an unknown place, a place of no boundaries, of endless promise. She would go there with him, with this man she loved. The
past, the future, nothing mattered any more, only this driving need, this craving that he had triggered within her, for something more than she had ever known.

With supreme effort, he wrenched his lips away, green eyes glittering, slicing over her. ‘Stop me.’ Blunt desire jagged at his voice. His hands cupped her shoulders, steadying her, steadying himself. A ruddy flush grazed his high cheekbones.

Alice tasted the sweetness of his breath. ‘I don’t want to.’

‘You know what will happen.’

She nodded.

With a groan he claimed her mouth once more, bearing her down to the rumpled blanket in one easy movement. He ached to possess her, but schooled himself to go slowly, to take his time and savour this beautiful maid. There might not be another time, or place. Dragging his lips away, his hands snagged urgently in her hair, pulling out the securing pins, scattering them as the long cascades of rippling gold rope spilled around her face, down her back.

Sweet Jesu! He buried his face in that sweet-smelling mass, imbued with the fresh, clean scent of lavender. Alice laughed, sheer joy bubbling up in her heart, her tentative fingers reaching up to trace the jutting contour of his jaw, curling around to smooth the silken fronds of hair at the back of his neck, urging his head down.

‘Don’t stop,’ she whispered.

He heard the shaky need in her hesitant plea and his heart flowered with pleasure. Such passion tucked into that slender frame, a brimming energy that matched his own vigorous desire. He had never known a woman so warm, so eager. Katherine…nay, not now. His hand
slid beneath the hem of her chemise, travelling slowly, sensuously up the satiny length of her calf, her thigh.

‘Bastien…?’ Her stomach muscles flexed, then squeezed forcibly with gathering awareness, excitement melting within her.

‘Hush now…trust me,’ he whispered, his breath rasping hot against her ear. Against the velvet green of the mossy ground, her skin appeared as if covered in a sparkling net of dew. He stretched his sinewy length beside her; ripples of surprise jolted through her as she realised he was naked.

So soft, she was so soft.

He moved over her, enfolding her within the burly embrace of his body, clasping her tight, shielding her from the bright, knowing light of the moon. She gasped out loud as the scorching need of him nudged her thigh, before sliding into her tender folds, the very nub of her womanhood. Her limbs liquefied, lucid thought chased from her mind, intoxicated by the very feel of him. Her hands clung to his neck as she succumbed to the wild, tumultuous frenzy that drove through her heart, her blood.

Unable to rein himself back, he sank into her in a blaze of unstoppable passion. His blood ran fast, unchecked and wild, his heart thumping out of control as he drove into her, barely checked by the momentary resistance of her virginity, filling her completely, utterly.

Her arms fluttered outwards, the slightest whimper on her breath as he surged into her, her eyes closing under the all-consuming, forceful impact of him. Yet within a moment, the stinging ache was replaced by a mounting, churning fullness as Bastien began to move
within her, sure and steady at first before gaining pace, faster and faster. Her body responded, matching his rhythm, rising in his arms to meet each increasingly powerful thrust, clinging to his shoulders as they rocked together. Moving with him, animal instinct guiding her, she let him lead her, take her. Her breath emerged in short, brisk pants, her mind dissolving into a gamut of strange flickering sensations building within the very core of her, rounding and swelling.

A tingling spasm shot down her legs, weakening them, curling her toes, and as his lips sealed to hers once more, the boiling, swelling knot within her pushed beyond its fragile limits, bursting into a thousand scattering stars. She clung to him, desperately, shimmering lights streaking through her mind, as wave upon wave of shattering desire convulsed through her.

‘Mother of God!’ Reaching his own climax, Bastien collapsed over her, his breathing snatched and tattered against her ear, his heavy frame quenched, replete.

The creak of branches and the rising, sifting breeze woke him; the swift reverberations of birds’ wings against the cacophony of twitterings and chatterings signalling the imminent sunrise. Above him, through the tumbled stone opening of a former arched window, the three-quarter moon shone, alongside a star, sparkling like newly minted silver. And in his arms, Alice, sleeping soundly.

In the aftermath of their love-making, his body still hummed, satiated and replete. He was astonished at how he felt, astounded at the place they had reached, together, two souls locked in singing harmony. After Katherine’s death, he had thought himself incapable of ever
making love to a woman again; yes, he’d entertained the rough couplings with the battleground whores, suitable purely for physical release, but this? This had been something entirely different. For the first time in as long as he could remember, the lump of metal that caged his heart seemed smaller, lighter somehow, the memories of Katherine, of his brother, receding into the shadows. He touched the ring at his neck, waiting for the familiar knock of painful memory. Nothing. Only the briefest hint of something that had been lost.

Alice had done this, made him feel whole again, this small, courageous maid at his side: brave enough to stand up against convention for what she believed in, yet gentle and kind, always putting others before herself. It was her
naïveté,
her belief that people were essentially good, that had landed her in trouble, yet he admired her for it.

Alice shifted against him, nuzzling her face into his shoulder, but she did not wake. In the luminous morning light, her skin was like the inside of an oyster shell, pellucid and pure, imbued with a delicate rosy blush. Her dark gold hair, mussed and tumbled, fell around her face, over his bare arm at her back. She had barrelled into his life, unexpected, chaotic, and had set him at odds with who he thought he was. He told himself he had gone after her because that’s what anyone would have done for a woman known to be in danger, but he knew it was a lie. He had gone after her because he wanted to be with her. Because he craved everything about her, her odd little mannerisms, her generous, spirited, courageous company, her quiet, powerful beauty. But he’d gone too far.

‘Bastien?’ Alice uttered tentatively.

Guilt caved his chest—how could he have done such a thing? He’d taken advantage of her when she was at her most vulnerable, his base, physical instincts surging through him, consuming him, consuming her. He was no better than Edmund, the way he had behaved. Shame washed over him, corroding his soul.

Unable to look at her, Bastien extricated his arm, rose to his feet. ‘You’d better get dressed,’ he ordered her tonelessly. ‘And then we’ll leave.’ He strode over to his horse, bending over to pick up the saddle and fling it into place.

‘What’s the matter?’ Alice propped herself up, the morning air chilling her body, the flimsy chemise billowing about her. She hugged her arms about her chest.

His eyes bore into her questioning features. It was better this way, he told himself. He would poison her sweetness, sully that bright smile, her gentle, kind ways. She was better off without him.

‘Nothing,’ he said abruptly. ‘We need to move on, that’s all. Felpersham and his men might still be out searching. I’d feel happier if we were behind stone walls.’

A huge lump balled in her chest, a horrible sense of wrongdoing, of wilting disappointment. What had felt so right the night before now felt terribly, terribly wrong. Scrabbling to her feet, she reached for her kirtle, her gown. The severed laces on the back bodice of her dress mocked her, filling her with shame. Her movements were jerky, tense as she stepped into the kirtle, then pulled the gown up around her shoulders.

Reaching down to scoop up his cote-hardie from the ground, she turned towards him, bundling his garment
haphazardly in her arms. ‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’ Her tongue moved woodenly in her dry mouth.

‘About what?’ His harsh tone scoured her.

‘About…us?’ she replied timidly, a hectic flush rising on her throat. She clutched desperately on to Bastien’s cote-hardie, a woollen boat in a storm-tossed sea.